Deviation Actions
Literature Text
Chapter 13: Forest Stories
When dawn broke the next morning, Bejikixen expected to be the first one rising, but he was quite surprised to see Aesthyrarytiss already preparing her pack for the journey, already garbed in her full plate armor. When Aesthyrarytiss noticed the surprised look from the Dragonborn, she tossed him a cloth bag.
“Come on, get up! We want to be leaving as soon as possible, Bejikixen,” she said, and the other Dragonborn could only stare as he slowly got up, moving to buckle his full plate armor into place and began packing up his items. He had very few possessions—only his Elven double bow caught Aesthyrarytiss’s immediate attention—but it did not seem like he was too poorly off. He was definitely lacking the ammunition and power than some of the paladins that Aesthyrarytiss had trained with had, but maybe that was to be expected since she knew nothing about his past.
“Are you always up with the sun, Aesthyrarytiss?” Bejikixen asked, and Aesthyrarytiss nodded as she continued to pack up her gear.
“Yes,” she said. “Ever since my sister and I turned thirty-five, we have been rising with the sun to take to the training fields in our native village of Irilia. That little village would be a sight for my sore eyes right now, believe me…” she said. Something in her voice struck a chord with him; a cord so deep that he found himself looking away.
“I wish that I could say the same of Lericia…” he said, and Aesthyrarytiss’s head shot up.
“You are from Lericia?” she asked in shock, and he stared blankly at her for a few moments before he spoke again.
“Yes…” he said. “Not originally, but Lericia is where I spent most of my days as a youth. No, my birth village is hiding somewhere where only druids can find it; convenient enough since it is a village full of those darned tree-whisperers…”
“I take it that you are not exactly a fan of the druids,” Aesthyrarytiss said, and Bejikixen shook his head solemnly.
“My mother was a druid. She wanted nothing more than for her only son to follow in her footsteps, but… something about the way of life of the druids… how they have to be partially neutral… I cannot maintain any degree of neutrality, especially not where justice and those wronged by others are concerned,” he said. “But the rest of the tale is best left for when we are on the trail. Where is our dragon friend?” he asked, and Aesthyrarytiss laughed.
“Zaratoovir has been out hunting. He decided that he could not sleep as an Elf, so he went out into the forests to hunt and prepare breakfast for us—one Athearverthicha is awake and has packed her gear, we shall set out on our journey,” she said, looking over at the brown-haired Elf with sad eyes.
“Your sister… something in your heart grieves for her,” Bejikixen said, and Aesthyrarytiss turned to face him as he saw a single tear slide down her face.
“You have no idea how much I grieve for her every day,” she said, her voice heavy with sorrow as she said this. “She was one of the ones who did not want me to undertake the Rite, but I knew that I needed to. She might be the only one who will stand by me now, but before I decided that I wanted to do this, she was just as against it as my parents are. But, as with your story, this tale is best left for when we are on the trail. Athearverthicha!” she said, raising her voice as she called her sister’s name. The Elf sat up in an instant, her eyes alert.
“Huh? What did I miss?” she asked, and Aesthyrarytiss shook her head.
“If we were back in Irilia, you would have missed part of the dawn drills,” the paladin said, and the ranger’s eyes widened in horror.
“Why did you not awaken me?!” she asked, and Aesthyrarytiss laughed.
“I figured that you could use the few extra minutes of sleep, dearest sister, but now… now, we must set off. With Zaratoovir spending the night outside of the village hunting, I think it would be best if we put as many miles between us and this place as we can,” she said, and Nessa uttered a curse here.
“You mean he spent the entire night outside of the village hunting? In his dragon shape, I am almost certain? If the villagers see him—!”
“That is why we are leaving,” Bejikixen said calmly, and Nessa looked down, pursing her lips as she thought about this for a moment. After what felt like entirely too long, she finally nodded.
“Most all of my gear remained packed. I can be ready as soon as I get my armor on,” she said, and Aesthyrarytiss nodded.
“Be quick about it, please; we do not need to stay here any longer. I fear that the villagers may be onto what Zaratoovir actually is, and forget the fact that he’s a metallic dragon and therefore is not evil,” Aesthyrarytiss said, and Nessa nodded as she slid into her leather armor, her eyes decidedly concerned. Once she was dressed in her armor, the three headed downstairs quickly, noting how the room fell decidedly silent from the appearance of the two Dragonborn paladins. Neither, however, seemed to mind the sudden silence as they made their way out of the inn, and Nessa moved to keep up with them, her footsteps light and deft.
“Do you think that they already know about Zaratoovir?” Nessa asked in a whisper, her voice wavering with worry as she said this. Aesthyrarytiss’s smile turned devious when she heard the worry in her sister’s voice.
“Do I detect concern for the Aurixmolik elders’ son in your voice, Athearverthicha?” she asked in a singsong voice, and Nessa turned to glare at Aesthyrarytiss pointedly.
“Be silent!” she hissed, making her way out of the village as quickly as she could. Aesthyrarytiss and Bejikixen followed suit, although they were laughing the whole while as they did so.
“So, either he’s taken a liking to her; she’s taken a liking to him; or they’ve both taken a liking to each other,” Bejikixen said, and Aesthyrarytiss nodded as she laughed.
“That is actually relatively accurate,” she said. “It all started during my Rite of Rebirth, so I do not know the full details of this relationship of theirs, other than Athearverthicha was reluctant to even let Zaratoovir join our party because she does not want to be the cause of his death, nor does she want him to be the cause of hers.”
“I fail to understand,” Bejikixen said, and Aesthyrarytiss chuckled.
“She fears that one of them will be taken captive and used as bait to lure the other in, and then to kill them both,” she said, and the red Dragonborn inclined his head ever so slightly here, his mouth shaped in a semi-perfect “o”. Once they were some distance from the village (about three miles or so), they stopped, and Nessa looked around warily.
“Zaratoovir!” she called, hoping that the dragon could hear her. It did not take long, for the dragon soon lumbered forth from the trees, his great golden form towering high above them. He looked down at the three, a draconic smile on his face.
“Good morning to you, my friends,” he said, but Nessa seemed far from amused.
“Zaratoovir! How could you spend the entire night out here, endangering our presence in the village?!” she asked, her voice bordering on hysteria. “Honestly, we could have been thrown out of the village if one of the villagers had seen you!”
“I cannot sleep nor live as an Elf for more than the duration of the day, Athearverthicha,” Zaratoovir said bluntly. “It is within my nature to want to hunt—to fly, to soar, and to sleep beneath the stars. I cannot stand to be trapped in a humanoid body for too long. In fact, the time I have spent in that Elven shell… I have spent more time in it since I met you two than I ever had before. They would never send me to serve as an emissary for the Guild because I hated appearing as something that I was not. Thraeixen never understood me.”
At the mention of the silver dragon’s name, Aesthyrarytiss perked up slightly.
“I know Thraeixen!” she said. “I met him when I was at the Guild when we were in Isocia. He was the one that told me to meet with the Aurixmolik before continuing on our journey,” she said.
“Thraeixen was the closest thing I had to a mentor,” Bejikixen said, causing Aesthyrarytiss and Zaratoovir to look at him with immense curiosity. “Lericia was small enough that we had no Guilds for our paladins. Thraeixen… somehow, he knew that I lived in Lericia, and he knew that I would need a mentor, as none of the other paladins served Bahamut’s noble cause.”
“But… I thought that there were paladins everywhere that served Bahamut’s cause…” Aesthyrarytiss said, her golden eyes shimmering with confusion. “How could it be that an entire village had but one paladin for Bahamut’s cause?”
“Simply enough—my village was close enough to the woodlands where the druids lived that most everyone served a woodland goddess or god, or else they served Corellon,” Bejikixen said plainly. “There were no paladins or clerics to Bahamut’s cause, so I was an outcast within Lericia. I was an outcast to begin with from birth!—my father, a human, had to remain in Lericia, as he was a cleric trainer, while my mother, an elf, was a druid—and she expected me to follow in her footsteps,” he said, and Aesthyrarytiss inclined her head ever so slightly.
“So, you are a half-elf,” she said, and he nodded.
“Aye, that I am,” Bejikixen said, his eyes sorrowful. “I wanted nothing to do with the ways of the druid—their indifference in ‘keeping with nature’ actually irritated me to no end, believe it or not. I wanted to fight for a good cause—any noble cause that I could find—but within that druid sanctuary, I could not.”
“So you left,” Nessa said, and Bejikixen nodded.
“That is right. I ran away from my mother’s village and sought out my father. When I told him I wanted to serve as an emissary to a deity, he said that I would have to pick one and serve them loyally. I tried serving Corellon, but I could not devote myself to him, or to Heironeous, or to Pelor… so, one night, I went out into the temple courtyard to meditate and discover which god it was that I should devote myself to.”
“And that, I am going to guess,” Aesthyrarytiss said, “was when you were called to be a Dragonborn and to serve Bahamut?”
“Yes. It was that very hour, in that courtyard, that Bahamut extended the invitation to me to become one of his Dragonborn children. The notion of giving up my half-elf heritage was a little out of the ordinary for me, but when I thought about the cause I would be fighting for… to purge the world of all evil dragon kind… I knew that it was the best cause I could fight for,” Bejikixen said, smiling. “It took weeks for the other clerics and paladins to accept my choice, and there was no way that I could undertake the Rite of Rebirth before they were willing to accept that I was going to serve Bahamut,” he said.
“And then you undertook the Rite of Rebirth,” Zaratoovir said, and Bejikixen nodded his head as he looked away.
“Thraeixen guarded me during those two days. No one wanted me to serve Bahamut, and they definitely did not want me deciding to become a Dragonborn. So, when the time came for me to emerge from the egg…”
“How did you feel?” Aesthyrarytiss asked, and Bejikixen stopped dead in his tracks, his eyes alert as he looked around before answering.
“I was terrified,” he said, pulling his greatsword from his sheath. The two sisters and the dragon stared at him in confusion, but when five otyughs appeared from within the bushes, both Aesthyrarytiss’s and Nessa’s weapons were out, and Zaratoovir snarled at the beasts in a warning tone as he swiped his claws at them. The otyughs, however, did not seem interested in the warning that the dragon issued.
“Just the kind of a fight I was hoping for,” Nessa said, grinning as she took her two blades to one of the otyughs. The first of her blows landed true, while the second one grazed off of its hide. Her short sword, however, managed to find its mark as well, causing the beast to cry out in pain. This, however, did not stop the beast from lashing out with two of its tentacles in an attempt to squeeze the ranger’s breath from her lungs. It did just that, and Nessa let out a weak cry as the breath was squeezed from her lungs.
Bejikixen was the next to react, his Elven double bow at the ready. He pulled back the first arrow and sent it flying, followed by a second arrow thereafter. Both arrows sank into the otyugh that had Nessa held firmly, and it let out another shriek. Aesthyrarytiss took that as her opportunity to attack the beast, hefting her sword above her head as she brought it crashing down against the beast, and then raising it a second time. The first blow was enough to drop the creature, and she looked around with her eyes gleaming dangerously.
A second otyugh moved to make its mark now, aiming squarely for Aesthyrarytiss’s feet. The Dragonborn, however, was able to parry both of the blows directed at her feet easily enough. A third otyugh decided to turn its attention to Zaratoovir, its tentacles flailing as it attempted to grab onto the dragon. One of the tentacles latched on, but the other, the gold dragon merely swatted away. He then moved to bite at the otyugh, his teeth sinking through the aberration easily enough. The other two otyughs also turned their attentions to the dragon, but neither able to do much to harm it.
“This is the kind of fighting I like to see,” Nessa said brightly, free of the otyugh that had grabbed her before. “Let’s see what you’ve got, beasts!” she cried as she ran towards the beast, her swords raised to attack. Three blows, she aimed; three blows all hit, and the otyugh before her that had latched onto Zaratoovir fell to the ground, dead.
Bejikixen followed suit, taking one of the other two otyughs that had turned its attention on the golden dragon. Raising his own greatsword above his head, he brought it down on the otyugh, with both blows landing exactly where he had intended them to. The otyugh shrieked in pain, and Aesthyrarytiss followed Bejikixen’s two strikes with one of her own, ending the beast easily. Her second blow, she directed at the final of the otyughs who had attacked them, bringing it down hard upon its head.
Zaratoovir was the next to strike, lowering his head down to bite into the otyugh. The beast squirmed within the dragon’s jaws, but it soon stopped moving, stilled by the power of the dragon’s jaws. Once he had dropped the otyugh’s body, Zaratoovir took on his Elven form, glancing from Aesthyrarytiss to Nessa to Bejikixen nervously.
“That did not seem normal, did it?” he asked, and Nessa laughed.
“We’ve been running into these encounters since day one, Zaratoovir… creatures that do not normally attach driven to pursue hapless travelers. We are still trying to understand it…” she said, and Aesthyrarytiss nodded slowly.
